Researching Alfred Russell

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Russell was emancipated in 1833 (with his mother Amelie "Milly" Crawford) by their mistress Mary Owen Todd Russell Wickliffe (Russell's grandmother through his white father). Wickliffe also emancipated his cousin, Lucretia Russell, and her four children. Both families emigrated together from the United States to Liberia that year. Alfred F. Russell later married and had a daughter by the name of Julia Ann, who later married John Douglas Simpson one of the first black congressmen from Florida, United States. They both had several children including Alpha Douglas Simpson, father of former Vice President of Liberia Clarence L. Simpson Sr. Alfred Russell served as a Methodist missionary and later owned a large coffee and sugarcane farm. Russell continued to serve as a Methodist minister after entering politics; he was also elected to the Liberian Senate, and served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate of Liberia.

Russell, active in abstract circles in New York until 1953, was regularly included in the Whitney Annual as well as being part of seven exhibits of Museum of Modern Art's "Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America". In New York he had three solo shows at the Peridot Gallery as well as being in early Abstract Expressionist group shows at the Sidney Janis Gallery, the Kootz Gallery and at the Galerie de France in Paris.

Russell caustically renounced avant-garde abstraction in a Symposium on the Human Figure in 1953. Thereafter, Russell painted mainly in classically and surrealistically figurative styles that still showed influence of abstractionism. His last New York exhibit was at the Tatischeff Gallery in 1979 as his later work was rarely exhibited. In addition to producing stylistically controversial work, after the 1950s, his latent anti-Semitism had become exposed and he had essentially destroyed any chance for a continuing career outside of academia.

Russell studied at the Art Student's League and earned a master's degree at Columbia University. He also studied printmaking at the Atelier 17 in both Paris and New York. Teaching at the M.F.A program at Brooklyn College from 1946 until 1976, when he retired, Russell influenced many younger artists in figurative painting including Gabriel Laderman. He is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.